President Yoweri Museveni has said that although his government inherited a largely collapsed economy when it got into power in 1986, they have managed to take the country’s economy through the phases of economic recovery, expanded, diversified and transformed the economy on all fronts.
While addressing a team of investors under the Council for Algerian Economic Renewal-Conseil du renouveau économique algérien (CREA) led by their President Mr. Kamel Moula in Algiers on Monday, President Museveni urged Algerian investors and businessmen to take advantage of Uganda’s profitability by building and locating production facilities in the country which has got all the required raw materials that just need value addition.
The President who was concluding his three-day state visit in the North African country, told the Algerian business community that despite the global value of coffee business in the world being 460 billion dollars, the coffee producing countries share only 25 billion dollars out of which Africa gets only 4.8 billion dollars.
Uganda being the biggest coffee producer, pockets only 900 million dollars of that.
Value addition in coffee is among the ten (10) key priority areas of investment where Algerian investors working together with Uganda’s ministry of Trade should focus their energies on.
The other areas include: Textile industry, Automobiles industry, Chocolate Production using cocoa, Footwear production, Animal feeds production, pharmaceutical starch production, Fruits processing, Human Medicine and vaccine production and Tea processing.
About footwear production, the Ugandan Head of State informed Algerians that Uganda has built a leather factory which is producing high quality leather, but local absorption of the finished leather is still low.
On Animal feeds, the President expressed dismay over the increased imports of animal feeds from Kenya and other countries despite having excess production of maize in Uganda amounting to 4 million tons.
Before concluding his visit to Algeria, the President held a meeting with Algeria’s Minister of Energy and Mines Mr. Mohamed Arkab together with the CEO of Sonatrach Mr. Toufik Hakkar and their delegation where discussions hinged on opportunities in oil and gas development in Uganda. The meeting was also attended by officials from Uganda’s Energy Ministry led by Minister Ruth Nankabirwa. He also met Algeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development M. Mohamed Abdulhafid Hanni and his delegation over animal vaccine/animal product exports between the two countries. The meeting was attended by officials from Uganda’s Ministry of Agriculture led by Minister Frank Tumwebaze.
This is President Museveni’s second visit to the North African country after the first one in October 2015 at the invitation of the then President Abudelaziz Bouteflika that saw Uganda open its first ever mission in Algeria to strengthen relations in education, trade and cooperation in the oil and gas sector to boost Uganda’s exports.